No data caps, no blocked ports, and better support are pretty darn compelling.

Compared to other advanced countries, high-speed Internet access in the US is in notoriouslysorryshape, with high bills and low customer satisfaction. Even as commercials exhort customers to download music and stream movies, most ISPs are implementing data caps. Netflix and other movie-on-demand services are among the most popular online destinations, accounting for almost 30 percent of peak-time Internet traffic in North America, but using Netflix every night can bump a customer right up against their ISP's download cap.

Hosting your own game or Web server can also run afoul of ISP restrictions, either because ISPs block the ports you want to use or because running servers on a home connection violates the ISP's terms of service.

And computers and portable devices with ridiculous amounts of storage and processing power mean that everyone is creating content to share, but tiny upload pipes make that sharing unreasonably difficult.

But there is another way—a way to get vastly improved customer service experience and a connection free of caps and other restrictions. It simply requires that you participate in that grand old American tradition: voting with your wallet.

Most ISPs offer several grades of "business-class" Internet connections, intended for use by companies large and small. The prices can spiral up into thousands and tens of thousands of dollars per month for large businesses, but ISPs typically have offerings for small companies that don't cost much more than standard consumer Internet connections. They come with some additional benefits that might be of particular interest to the rabid Netflix watcher or the would-be home server admin, and nothing prevents ordinary folks from signing up. But is business-class Internet worth the money? That all depends on what kind of user you are. For me, it's essential.

The bennies

Let's run through the main features found in business class connections as compared to consumer connections.

No caps. Most major ISPs impose a per-month limit on the total amount of data you can download (out of the four we talked to, only Verizon's FIOS service lacked a cap). ISPs claim this allows them to manage traffic on their networks and keep any one person from using more than his or her "fair share" of the available bandwidth. The cap is typically at least 250GB per month, but it's becoming more common for customers to hit that mark, especially in households with several heavy Internet-using occupants. This results in a nastygram from the ISP or extra charges; repeat offenders might even find themselves disconnected.

Across the board, business-class connections lack bandwidth caps. They are still monitored for "suspicious" or "excessive" usage—you wouldn't want to run the next Megaupload out of your closet—but worrying about your monthly download quota is no longer necessary. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video fans can stream to their heart's content without worrying about receiving a letter from their ISPs.

Unblocked ports. Most ISPs firewall some inbound and some outbound requests on common low-order TCP ports. Some of this blocking is for security—for example, most ISPs block TCP port 25, the default port that SMTP servers use to send e-mail. This helps control the torrent of spam spewed by customers' malware-infected PCs. However, a business might want to be able to send and receive e-mail directly, and so business-class connections lack these port restrictions. Similarly, the terms of service on a residential account often forbid users from running servers of any kind, but businesses might want to self-host websites. Business-class accounts have few, if any, restrictions on running servers.

Static IP addresses. This is especially useful if you want to run a server. The prevalence of dynamic IP addresses among residential customers has led to many workarounds for folks who want to assign a domain name to their changing public IP addresses, but a static IP address makes such workarounds unnecessary. If you're going to run a Web or gaming server from your closet, it's extremely helpful to have a static IP address, since you can slap a domain name onto it and never have to worry about keeping up with dynamic DNS reassignment services.

Tech support. Calling an ISP's technical support line can be a horrible, frustrating experience. Understanding that businesses are on the hook for more money than consumers and that they need reliable support, ISPs treat business-class accounts far better. All ISPs have separate support lines for business-class customers; some, including Comcast, actually assign dedicated account representatives, eliminating the need to wait in the phone queue for most questions. In addition, business-class customers usually get priority over residential customers when scheduling technician visits.

The extras. Finally, ISPs have a raft of value-added services available to business-class customers. Some offer dozens of e-mail inboxes and free domain name registrations; most also offer Web hosting, an antivirus service for multiple computers, and some kind of collaboration software like Microsoft Sharepoint. These add-ons are of questionable value to home users, but they definitely have their place when viewed in the context of their intended market.

The price

So how much do these upgraded services cost? It depends on who your ISP is, where in the country you are, and how fast of a connection you want. I can relate my own anecdotal experience with Comcast in the Houston area, as I've been a business-class user for a couple of years now. My bandwidth is 16 megabits down and 2 megabits up, and I have a single static IP address. I'm not under contract. Here's my bill:

My Comcast Business Class bill, front side.

My Comcast Business Class bill, reverse side.

The service itself is $69.95. A single static IP and the required equipment rental for the SMC 8014 NAT router add another $12, and taxes and fees round out the bill to a total of $87.13 every month. This is without cable TV (I proudly cut the cord more than ten years ago) or VoIP telephone service; bundling services together can lower your overall bill just as it can with a regular consumer connection.

Pricing for business class Internet, unfortunately, is notoriously tricky to pin down. The tier of service I'm at doesn't even appear on Comcast's list of business-class plans, which range from $59.95 per month for 12Mbps down/2Mbps up all the way up to $369 per month for 100Mbps down/10Mbps up. The story with other national ISPs is similar. Cox's packages vary by region, with its "Select" tier (10Mbps down/2Mbps up, an included static IP address, and several other value-added features) priced at $59.95 per month in Cleveland but $103.00 per month in Arizona. We asked Cox about this variance, which appeared to be the largest among the ISPs examined, and they replied that regional prices are set by "local market dynamics," which include the price of competitors' services.

If you're lucky enough to have Verizon FiOS in your area, the starting price isn't bad at all, with its packages page showing $64.99 per month for 15Mbps down/5Mbps up; however, if you want a static IP address you'll pay a minimum of $104.99 per month for a 25Mbps symmetrical connection.

AT&T U-verse's business-class site is scant on details, but pricing ranges from $40 a month for 1.5Mbps down/1.0Mbps up to $100 a month for 24Mbps down/3Mbps up.

From the horse's mouth

Ars spoke with representatives from four large national ISPs: Comcast, Cox, Verizon, and AT&T. Each ISP pointed out the value of business-class services to businesses, but all four were hesitant to recommend them for a regular home user.

Roger Crisman, the marketing director for Cox Businesses Internet Services, noted that data from IDC shows that 50 percent of businesses in the US are home-based, and said that Cox's business-class offerings are designed to appeal to folks working out of the home. The prime differentiator he sees between home and business-class services is the support—Cox doesn't outsource business-class support, so when business-class customers call in for help, they can speak directly to a Cox employee. He also noted that extra features like online backup, cloud storage, and the Cox-branded McAfee Security Suite are designed to help out businesses too small to have their own IT support staff; this would obviously include home businesses.

Services aside, the lack of download caps and the unblocked ports are particularly appealing to power users, and Ars asked if Cox was seeing any uptick in business-class service adoption among home users who aren't running businesses and just want the extra features. Crisman replied that they weren't seeing any significant trends in that direction. Although IDC's data shows a huge number of home-based businesses, only about 10 percent of Cox's business-class connections are home business users—suggesting that most small home businesses use consumer accounts.

AT&T's Jim Gewecke, director of Small Business Product Management, did note that AT&T is seeing an uptick in business-class service adoption in homes, though not necessarily among regular folks looking for additional service and support. "While we can't disclose specific numbers or percentages," he said in an e-mailed statement, "more and more we're seeing home-based small businesses, telecommuters, and other work-from-home employees use AT&T services to ensure they have the connectivity they need to be productive."

Switching

For me, going business class makes sense. I get a lot of mileage out of my static IP and my unblocked ports—I have no fewer than four Linux servers in my closet and I host both a personal website and The Chronicles of George from them, along with a Minecraft server. I've become accustomed to accessing my NAS and all my computers when away from home, without having to worry about remote access ports being blocked; I also very much like my servers being able to directly e-mail me when they have trouble, without having to relay the mail through Google. Perhaps most importantly of all, I never have to worry about watching my download quota for the month.

Business-class service is absolutely right for me, and I'd never go back, but it's not right for everyone. If you value the same things I do—especially if you're looking to run a publicly accessible server from home—it might be right for you, too.

I sense a lot of Stockholm syndrome from this article - we are no longer arguing that US broadband isn't awful, or maintaining that it will become any less awful in the foreseeable future, merely looking for options to make it marginally less awful.

People commenting on the speed Mr. Hutchinson is getting are missing the point, I think. I think it is good to see an article highlighting a possible alternative to the sub-par internet in the US. Sure, it still isn't ideal (referring to the speed), but at least it gives people an idea of what else is out there. I for one had never considered moving off of a residential plan an onto a business plan, so this is valuable information.

I've said before that we need to stop complaining about the state of ISPs in the US and start doing something about it, and I think this is one way we can, as stated in the article, vote with our wallet.

This is why I thank God every day that the local phone company (Cincinnati Bell) went to fiber optics. FiOS was a pipe dream in my area, but Cincinnati Bell strolled through and is giving similar performance for the price. I'm currently paying $60/m for 30mbit down, and 10mbit up. They do block port 25, but otherwise their TOS explicitly allows home servers (within reason) and it's far more stable and reliable than my old Road Runner connection was. Road Runner did not seem too happy to see me go, either.

Overall, it's not download speeds that bother me for most US citizen connections, it's the upload speeds. I was, no joke, getting 15mbit down and 0.75mbit up on Road Runner for $50 before I went to fiber. Uploading videos was a royal pain, and streaming some game videos to Twitch.tv was literally impossible. I feel like cable needs to step the hell up with their upload speed offerings. It's not enough to offer a 1:10 ratio of download/upload speed anymore, in the day and age of YouTube, iTunes Match, cloud storage, etc.

Been using Comcast Business class broadband for about a year now (for a legit business mind you) and it's the best service I've ever had. I used to have AT&T DSL and before that regular Comcast consumer cable broadband. Comcast Business is like night and day. They're also like a completely different company in dealing with their customer service. They actually treat you like a customer for one and not like they're doing you a favor by allowing you to use their service.

For example, they email me a week in advance to tell me there's going to be some work in the area and my service "may" be interrupted between certain hours (usually in the wee hours of the morning). I've never had that. Usually, and especially with AT&T, if there's an outage, I'm the one one that has to report it...after going through about half an hour of "okay, let's check your settings, go into blah blah blah" before they finally realize there IS an outage.

235 Reader Comments

I used to have business internet at home up until two months ago. I was hosting my own Exchange server and the only port my ISP blocks (Shaw) on the residential service is SMTP so it was required (without paying for a 3rd party relay host). Throw in a couple static IP's and I was getting 50/5 for $120/mo.

The biggest benefit, hands down, was the support. Once a business customer for one service you become a business customer for all services so even when I had issues with my TV or phone I could call the business support folks where response and resolution times were infinitely faster. The biggest negative was there were no bundling deals on TV and phone service loike residential customers get.

Two months ago I migrated my domain and mail to Office 365. Without a need for inbound SMTP and services like DynDNS being pretty damned reliable I 'downgraded' back to residential services. Not only was I able to upgrade to a 100/5 for $80/mo I also got bundling discounts on my TV and phone packages. I haven't had to deal with support yet and I'm sure I'll grumble when I do but even with the monthly charge for Office 365 I'm saving money and getting even faster internet now.

.. I mean literally a must. If you got that bandwidth because you actually intend to use it, you'll find you've blasted past their data caps in about the first 3-4 days of every month. They

If you plan to use 250 GB * 30/3.5 = appox 2.1 TB per month every month, then yeah, get yourself off the residential circuit of accounting on the on the business one. Our family of four uses the network every day in an unfettered manner, streams daily, big Steam DL's, torrents, and so on and we barely get near the 250 GB limit on an extremely busy month. On average it is well below that. I'd say your usage does not match up to the average, or even 1 or 2 STD above, residental user.

Whether I'm a typical user or not really isnt the issue. They advertise "100mbit Extreme service" not 100mbit for 1/4th of the first day of the month. 100mbit comes out to about a TB of bandwidth per day. In sweden 1Gbit unmetered non-capped internet runs about $90 USD per month. Your counter point that I should be ok with the comcast monopoly charging me 4x the residential rate because I choose to use the advertised bandwidth I paid for is pretty silly. That'd be like advertising a car based on a high MPG it gets less than 1% of the time. Sure your car gets 99 MPG that 1% of the time you happen to be on a steep grade and don't apply your brakes. It doesn't mean they get to advertise the car as a 99 MPG car.

Prediction: business-class broadband will be a better deal and will see larger uptake when most ISPs inevitably botch their hastily-thrown-together IPv6 implementation and switch to carrier-grade NAT for residential service.

When I lived in Grand Forks, ND, one of our only cable options was Midcontinent communications - they routinely upgraded our data speeds for free and didn't raise prices that often. When I left in 2009, I was paying $60/m for 65/15.

The author said he was living in a suburb of Houston (town of about 100k) and is paying $80 for 16/2. If that doesn't speak to the sorry state of our internet infrastructure, I'm not sure what does.

Here in the Atlantic Provinces, we have Aliant: I have their 'slowest' fibre at 20mbs both ways, with no caps whatsoever. Almost all ports open (just two or three blocked ports - those ports reserved for local networks anyway). And good/great tech support.

Internet, plus phone service and unlimited long-distance phone for Canada and the US: $114/month.

I've got Cox business Internet in Vegas. I pay $80/mo for a static ip and 25/4 (or so, I haven't checked my speeds in while).

The best thing about being on the commercial plans is no annual rate hike. Every march, Cox raises rates on their residential Internet plans by a few dollars. But I haven't seen a rate increase since I started on this plan 5 years ago. In about two or three years, based on their current rate hike trajectory, my commercial plan will be cheaper than the equivalent residential plan.

2Mbit up on a webserver? Does that really provide enough bandwidth? I'd have thought a symmetric 12Mbit would be minimum - especially now that Google evaluates speed of the site as well as content...

I've done testing with Blitz.io and found that the connection ramps far beyond what I'll ever need it for. When one of my sites was linked on the front page last week, the connection was fine to support the load across three days (at about 50,000 page views a day), while also serving Minecraft, supporting several Mumble connections, and having me working from the house the entire time.

Serving small bites of static content helped, too.

oojohnboyoo wrote:

At this point, if you told Comcast that you were thinking of moving to Verizon, they'd likely bump your speed a bit just to keep you.

Nope. Comcast's response every time I've told them that has been, "We'll be sorry to see you go, but you're at the fastest tier available in your service area." VZ's non-FIOS offerings here are still stuck in 1999, so it's not really an option.

I really wish people would stop posting about the US having shitty internet. We _know_ it has shitty internet. There's no need to rub salt in the wound.

Why? Maybe if there is enough bitching people will actually vote with their wallets instead of shelling out $$$ they dont have on the latest shiny.If US internet situation is pretty bad, US cellular is just pure suck. Only in the US do telcos get to double dip by making you pay for incoming minutes and charge you $20 for sms plans (and i wont even go into tethering).Why? Because in the land of the free we have the best government money can buy and telcos have a lot of money, lol.

Static IP would be the only reason for me to pay for something like this.. However, my IP rarely changes, and when it does, it's easy enough to find the new IP address even remotely. Don't need any specific ports to be open (why anyone would host their own email server when you can have the convenience of GMail is beyond me).

I pay $45/mo for 100Mb down / 10Mb Up. There are no caps, and to be honest, I've had more power outages than Internet outages the last several years. I think there was one unplanned outage in the last 4 years, and maybe 2-3 planned outages that lasted for a few hours.

I live in Sweden, but there's really only one ISP to choose from. Soon, there will be two, which should make prices a little more reasonable (You shouldn't have to pay more than $30/mo for 100/10Mb really).

I sense a lot of Stockholm syndrome from this article - we are no longer arguing that US broadband isn't awful, or maintaining that it will become any less awful in the foreseeable future, merely looking for options to make it marginally less awful.

Why? Maybe if there is enough bitching people will actually vote with their wallets instead of shelling out $$$ they dont have on the latest shiny.

What would you recommend? How do you "vote with your wallet" when you can choose between two services, neither of which are very good? Do you pay for the least-bad one, or do you go without Internet access?

I really wish people would stop posting about the US having shitty internet. We _know_ it has shitty internet. There's no need to rub salt in the wound.

Its not just internet. You people are getting screwed more and more by businesses. Your "low" taxes are also a joke, considering what you DON`T get, like free healtcare, free education and so on.Don`t get me wrong, people in US are great, and the country has a great history (human rights, protecting the free world and so on). The problem is that lower and middle class people accept getting screwed every day, and will even protect the system that keeps them in that position.

Residential FiOS is just right for me, unfortunately I can't seem to get it wherever I move to. I wish they would roll it out in more places. It was absolutely the fastest, lowest latency service I've ever had, and it worked 24/7 without a single issue.

I sense a lot of Stockholm syndrome from this article - we are no longer arguing that US broadband isn't awful, or maintaining that it will become any less awful in the foreseeable future, merely looking for options to make it marginally less awful.

Reminds me of that saying about ballet and ammo boxes. I supposed armed rebellion might work, but then again how many people are willing to DIE for internet service?

Cox's packages vary by region, with its "Select" tier (10Mbps down/2Mbps up, an included static IP address, and several other value-added features) priced at $59.95 per month in Cleveland

Damn, that's only like $5 more than I'm paying for TWC residential service (in Cleveland). Too bad Cox doesn't provide service to my neighborhood. Bitches. Maybe I'll see if TWC offers a similar business line. Wish I could threaten to switch companies, but alas (AT&T is the only alternative, and of course they're evil).

Luckily I still don't have a data cap though. I'm sure I would have hit it between Netflix and Steam.

...They do block access to The Pirate Bay though, that's a bit of a shame, but nothing a hosts file can't fix.

If changing your hosts file can fix this, then your ISP is just playing games with DNS and picking a different DNS server might save you some minor effort. I have my router set to always tell its DHCP clients to use Google's DNS at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 instead of whatever DNS servers my ISP specifies. Other people use services like EasyDNS

I really wish people would stop posting about the US having shitty internet. We _know_ it has shitty internet. There's no need to rub salt in the wound.

Its not just internet. You people are getting screwed more and more by businesses. Your "low" taxes are also a joke, considering what you DON`T get, like free healtcare, free education and so on.

I think the notion was that people were suppose to take the money they saved from low taxes and invest it in services they wanted. Something about being independent and not having anyone tell them what to do, or something.

Here in Spain a 16/2Mb connections would never be called "bussiness-class".

Heck, I have at home a 100/50 fibber connection with 90 cable TV channels, including phone line with 300 minutes free calls to cell phones plus another 300 minutes to land lines for 69,9€/month - that's around 90$ so close to Lee's Comcast one- and it's just a top "home-combo" - combo part is because it's Internet + Phone + TV.

Business class should have symmetric network lines as a bare minimum.

Even Orange - France Telecom - is building a fibber network with 100Mb symmetric lines for home users here at 45€/month. It does not reaches my home yet - 100Km / 62 miles from it - but they are pouring 300 million € on the network so I hope it gets here soon.

I don't really get why our US friends get ripped so hard for network connectivity. May be lack of competition ? AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile .... I use to hear only a handful of provider's names.

100/100 is included in my $90/month utilities here in South Korea, and was only $15/month at my old residence here. It's going to be a shock when I move back to Canada in a few months. Ping to NA is slow (upwards of 400ms), but I consistantly download from Steam and iTunes at 11 megabytes per second, and upload to various cloud providers at exactly the same speed.

In the face of no competition and no chance of there ever being any competition, they can do whatever they want.

Proof once again that monopolies, even legal ones, ruin everything.

I called Time Warner about some line quality issues I was having. Basically it was dumping outbound packets on me. After I did all their requested tech work for them, they sent me to level 3 to talk it over. The first level 3 tech I got on the phone didn't even look at anything, he just said "Buy Business Class Internet".

Because I was getting packet loss I should pay more? Because I mentioned I use a VPN to work and that I have a phone line from them that provides me with shit quality and no features?

Lucky for me, I live in an apt complex that is serviced by 2 cable companies. They pull the shit again, I can choose other directions.

Why? Maybe if there is enough bitching people will actually vote with their wallets instead of shelling out $$$ they dont have on the latest shiny.

What would you recommend? How do you "vote with your wallet" when you can choose between two services, neither of which are very good? Do you pay for the least-bad one, or do you go without Internet access?

Time warner charges $229 for business class 50/5 connection, while regular version of the same is $99. So you are paying 129 for a static ip address essentially since everything else is the same. Time warner is a monopoly in NYC so they can basically do whatever they want.Its funny that i was paying $20 for a symmetrical 20/20 VDSL+ connection in Kazakhstan and basically all over Europe. Still waiting for FIOS to come to apartments in New York.

Try again. TWC offers the 50/5 connection "business class" for $299/mth while the lower tiered 35/5 connection is for $229/mth (New York & New Jersey); that DOESN'T include a static IP. So with 1 static IP on top of either tiered connection is +$30/mth so now that $299/mth has grown to $329/mth. So then the questions come into play - Do you really need it? Is it really worth it?

I don't know about TWC in general but as a residential TWC customer in upstate NY I get ~20/2 connection (Turbo), uncapped, and no blocked UDP/TCP ports (easily verified by my server at home) for $55/mth. In my case it is definitely not worth the upgrade to "business class" service.

I feel for you my american cousins. My ISP just doubled the speed of my fibre line......for free. Up from 40Mbps to 80Mbps. £35 a month. No caps/fair usage. I live in a town of only 42,000 people and if you walk for more than half hour in any direction, you are surrounded by fields and cows, so it's not like I'm in a super urban area.

Yeah, I've been using Business Class Internet from TW Cable here in Austin for the last few years. It's horrendously expensive for a pathetic amount of bandwidth, but they do prioritize my packets so that I'm much more likely to get the meager amount of bandwidth which I'm paying out the ass for.

It's the best option I can get where I live, but if there was any competition at the local loop level, it'd probably cost about 80% less. Monopoly FTL.

I really wish people would stop posting about the US having shitty internet. We _know_ it has shitty internet. There's no need to rub salt in the wound.

Question for people in other countries: do you pay taxes that directly or indirectly pay for the internet service you get? Like the 60mbps internet in Romania for $15/month, is that taxpayer subsidized at all? I'm not trying to make any kind of political statement about capitalism vs. socialism, I'm just honestly curious (and I realize that ISPs in America have also received some taxpayer money, though I'm not sure exactly how much).

I have Comcast business class, and honestly if there were ANY other choice here in Detroit besides Comcrap and the Death Star, I would pay through the nose for it. I pay $106/mo for 22/5 and in the last four months, I've made nine service calls. I've made another three on top of that because they still haven't brought me the modem that I was promised, nor have the credits showed up on my account from where my service was completely down and after sending four techs out they finally admitted the issue was at the node (and the techs flat out said Comcast was not going to fix it because I'm in Detroit).

EDIT: My issue was resolved by moving...which Comcast wouldn't allow me out of the business class contract without paying the insane ETFs.

This is a very well written story and summary of the benefits of opting for a business class account (something I've actually considered)... but why is this considered acceptable?

I understand that support is atrocious for consumer accounts, and that almost everyone has datacaps. I became intimately familiar with the measure of Comcast's horrible tech support when I purchased a CABLECard device and had the audacity to believe I could get their assistance setting it up. I just don't understand how things got this way, or why "Give them more money" is even thought up as a solution. A business has to make profits, I'm not discounting that.. but these Telecoms earn some serious coin, and aside from new infrastructure (which none seem to be building) and general upkeep, they have few expenses. Support is one of them, and they're finding ways to make it worse and worse and worse. That's not even including data caps, which are their way of squeezing every last penny out of the infrastructure and consumer that they can.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but to me it's not Business Class. The article mentions voting with your wallet.. that doesn't mean paying more for the support you should get in the first place and to be exempt from data caps that make no sense. Voting with your wallet would mean that there is a competitor that does it better for the same price or less. Paying the same company more for something you should have in the first place is not a solution.

FiOS's non-bundle prices suck, $75/month is the lowest you can go for internet contract-free. I would like to see fast internet connections for something more affordable like $40-50/month. You pretty much have to bundle to make it more reasonable since extra services only add a few bucks a month. I'm currently paying $115/month for TV, DVR, and 25/25 internet, and it looks like new deals would be about the same or a little less for 50/25 internet. So those prices and the service you get with it (ignoring the crap router and DVR) are pretty great compared to the alternatives, but they're not doing much to make internet more affordable for consumers. Comcast here, for example, offers a 20 down connection for $30/month for the first 6 months and $45/month for the next 6 months after that.

People commenting on the speed Mr. Hutchinson is getting are missing the point, I think. I think it is good to see an article highlighting a possible alternative to the sub-par internet in the US. Sure, it still isn't ideal (referring to the speed), but at least it gives people an idea of what else is out there. I for one had never considered moving off of a residential plan an onto a business plan, so this is valuable information.

I've said before that we need to stop complaining about the state of ISPs in the US and start doing something about it, and I think this is one way we can, as stated in the article, vote with our wallet.

This is why I thank God every day that the local phone company (Cincinnati Bell) went to fiber optics. FiOS was a pipe dream in my area, but Cincinnati Bell strolled through and is giving similar performance for the price. I'm currently paying $60/m for 30mbit down, and 10mbit up. They do block port 25, but otherwise their TOS explicitly allows home servers (within reason) and it's far more stable and reliable than my old Road Runner connection was. Road Runner did not seem too happy to see me go, either.

Overall, it's not download speeds that bother me for most US citizen connections, it's the upload speeds. I was, no joke, getting 15mbit down and 0.75mbit up on Road Runner for $50 before I went to fiber. Uploading videos was a royal pain, and streaming some game videos to Twitch.tv was literally impossible. I feel like cable needs to step the hell up with their upload speed offerings. It's not enough to offer a 1:10 ratio of download/upload speed anymore, in the day and age of YouTube, iTunes Match, cloud storage, etc.

I really wish people would stop posting about the US having shitty internet. We _know_ it has shitty internet. There's no need to rub salt in the wound.

Question for people in other countries: do you pay taxes that directly or indirectly pay for the internet service you get? Like the 60mbps internet in Romania for $15/month, is that taxpayer subsidized at all? I'm not trying to make any kind of political statement about capitalism vs. socialism, I'm just honestly curious (and I realize that ISPs in America have also received some taxpayer money, though I'm not sure exactly how much).

Pricing cable Internet speeds is a fool's errand. The prices posted online may or may not give you a general idea of what to expect. But when you get something set up, or call to get it set up, the end result doesn't resemble anything that you've seen online. For example, this article lists Comcast's business grade plans, starting at $59.99/mo. In my area (Minneapolis) that plan is actually like $120/mo, for about half the speed that the low end personal plan offers.

Edit:It should also be noted that you don't just get a static IP address with business class. That's an extra feature you pay $15/mo for.

Been using Comcast Business class broadband for about a year now (for a legit business mind you) and it's the best service I've ever had. I used to have AT&T DSL and before that regular Comcast consumer cable broadband. Comcast Business is like night and day. They're also like a completely different company in dealing with their customer service. They actually treat you like a customer for one and not like they're doing you a favor by allowing you to use their service.

For example, they email me a week in advance to tell me there's going to be some work in the area and my service "may" be interrupted between certain hours (usually in the wee hours of the morning). I've never had that. Usually, and especially with AT&T, if there's an outage, I'm the one one that has to report it...after going through about half an hour of "okay, let's check your settings, go into blah blah blah" before they finally realize there IS an outage.

fwiw, I get Comcast business 12/2, static IP, business line, and basic cable for $115 per month with all fees rolled in. I think that is really competitive even with residential services because my price is not some intro rate and they provide the VOIP and data gateway devices "free" - and they've both had to be replaced already.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.